Teddy Roosevelt: “So we, the people, can preserve our liberty and our greatness in time of peace only by ourselves exercising the virtues…”

I have just been shot.

I wish to say that the Progressive Party is making its appeal to all our fellow citizens without any regard to their creed or to their birthplace.

Now, Therefore, I, Theodore Roosevelt, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the power in me vested by an Act of Congress, approved June fourth, eighteen hundred and ninety-seven, entitled, 'An Act Making appropriations…

Every special interest is entitled to justice—full, fair, and complete—and, now, mind you, if there were any attempt by mob-violence to plunder and work harm to the special interest, whatever it may be, that I most dislike, and the wealthy…